AtWhatMileage
Adas · 22 owner reports

Other speed control problem on the 2012 Chevrolet Traverse

2 crashes 1 injury 3 of the 22 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Reports of this failure 22
With an odometer reading 20
Reports per 1,000 built 0.4 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 15%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair $250–$2,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 8th

When other speed control problem gets reported

Owners of the 2012 Chevrolet Traverse report other speed control problem at a median of 90,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 115,000 miles, from 20 reports that carried an odometer reading.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 78,000 miles. It is the 8th most-reported problem on this model year.

The mileage distribution

The reported range runs from 30,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 125,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 95,100 miles across the middle 80% of reports.

When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.

15% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 20 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
30,500 miles 58,000 miles 89,370 miles 114,750 miles 125,600 miles

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 2 a crash and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $250–$2,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 11 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2019, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2012 at 90,000 miles.

By volume the 2011 carries the most reports, with 53; the 2012 has 22. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Tl* the contact owns a 2012 chevrolet traverse. The contact stated that he applied the brakes however, the vehicle erroneously accelerated. The contact removed his foot from the brakes and the vehicle began to function normally. The vehicle was not taken to the dealer for inspection. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 5,800. The VIN was unavailable.

5,800 miles NHTSA complaint 1015873 filed 2013-10-16

Tl* the contact owns a 2012 chevrolet traverse. The contact stated that after shifting into drive, the vehicle erroneously accelerated and crashed into a telephone pole. The contact sustained back, hip, and knee injuries while the passenger sustained lung contusions from the air bag deployment. A police report was not filed. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not contacted about the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 52,000.

52,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1040007 filed 2014-02-21

A week ago my traverse started making a grinding noise, and I thought it was the brakes so I took it to our mechanic who checked all four wheels and determined the brakes were fine. He said it was possibly a rock or something causing the noise and it stopped for a few days. This morning I was pulling into a parking spot at work and the steering froze up completely and the brakes did not want to work either. I almost hit the car I was parking next to! I'm so glad that didn't happen in the middle of traffic or a main street or it could have been a lot worse. Very scary, but what would cause this? Will gm be looking into this before someone gets really hurt or has a major accident? Taking back to the mechanic wednesday to check the steering pump.... Not happy. *tr

61,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1121896 filed 2014-10-20

Also reported on the 2012 Chevrolet Traverse

Other driver assistance problem

65 reports median 89k

Other engine problem

59 reports median 82k

Other steering problem

29 reports median 66k

Other electrical problem

27 reports median 99k

How far this goes

Complaints are voluntary, so 22 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does other speed control problem happen on the 2012 Chevrolet Traverse?

Across 20 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 90,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 115,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other speed control problem on the 2012 Chevrolet Traverse?

22 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.4 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed